1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to printer drivers and, in particular, to a system, method, and apparatus for dynamically creating a printer driver as part of the printing process.
2. Related Art
Personal computers are widely used to print documents containing text, graphics and images. Personal computers in offices are typically connected together using network technologies, which incorporate one or more printers in the network architecture. Typically, the printers can be shared by the plurality of personal computers connected to the network.
Preparing the computer generated document for printing requires several operations performed typically by printer driver software normally included on the computers. Computers arranged in the network usually include various types of printer driver software, which are compatible with or applicable to respective language interpreters available on the various types of printers in the network. In the network environment, the operator of each computer is required to select one of the printer drivers, which is applicable to one of the language interpreters on one of the printers. This selection must be made, for example, when a change is made from one type of printer to another or when new software is set on the computer.
Unfortunately, the selection of the appropriate printer driver can be a cumbersome and time-consuming process. The process can be further frustrated when the appropriate printer driver has not been set in the computer. Moreover, since the number of printers in a network can be large, the amount of printer driver software that may be required reduces the memory storage space available.